Darkness Falls, Daylight Fades
When you’re too tired to walk and too scared to run
And your heavyweight knees buckle under a ton
Blue sky visions turn into a storm
I’ve got suspicions you won’t make it one more
Well there’s no silver lining, there’s nothing to lose
So don’t wait for tomorrow
Don’t wait for tomorrow
I was in a state of panic for the entire drive back to Tulsa to see Taylor. It truly wasn’t a long drive, coming in at just around three hours. That was plenty of time to panic, though, and plenty of time to consider all the possible outcomes of our date. With all of that on my mind, the drive seemed easily twice as long.
So many things about finally going on a date—a real date, not something we tried to pretend wasn’t—with Taylor terrified me. I’m ashamed to admit it, was ashamed to even think it, but my shallow side was terrified of what Taylor might look like. I knew what chemo patients looked like—pale, thin, no hair. Unlike the rest of the female population, I had never found Taylor all that attractive anyway. He was already too thin, with gangly arms and legs that never seemed to do what he told them to. His ears stuck out, his cheeks were always red like he was embarrassed or sunburned, and his eyes had this annoying way of staring right through a person. He was striking, to be sure, but he wasn’t really what I would call attractive. I could only imagine what he might look like after chemo. I hated the thought every time it crossed my mind, but I couldn’t rid myself of it.
The worst thought, though, wasn’t that. What if there was really nothing between us? I had never truly given him a chance before. He had nice words for me, but that didn’t mean I reciprocated any of what he felt, even when I flirted back. What would I do if that was the case?
A thought occurred to me. I would sleep with him anyway. I knew myself, knew all too well the lack of shame I did a good job of faking. After all our flirting emails, after a three hour drive just for a date… I would sleep with him.
We planned to meet at his house first so that he could drive us to the movie theater. Taylor had tried to explain to me all of the restrictions placed on him due to his compromised immune system, but I didn’t really understand. The Admiral Twin was perfect four our purposes, though, because it meant we didn’t even have to leave the car. There would be only the bare minimum of interaction with other human beings.
I had only been to his house once or twice, but I remembered the way. I was buzzed in at the gate and my heart pounded so hard I thought it would burst through my chest or leap right out of my throat. Taylor had explained that he was staying in the pool house, so I steered my car that way, down the smaller driveway that led past their garage studio.
For a moment, I just sat in my car and stared at the pool house door. I must have stared a second too long, because the door swung open. There he was.
Every picture I had imagined of him was true. He couldn’t have been more than skin and bones—bones that had betrayed him, I remembered myself—and he was more pale than ever before, even the rosy color gone from his cheeks. As I stepped out of my car to meet him halfway, I saw that he had no hair, either. At least, that’s how it appeared to me. A big red beanie covered his head, and not even a wisp of blonde hair escaped its edges.
It was a scary sight, and my heart dropped. But somehow, he still looked like Taylor. He smiled, the expression looking strange on his nearly colorless lips.
“Lady,” he said, his voice soft. “You look even more beautiful than I remembered.”
It was cliché, but it still made me blush. Not knowing what to say in response, I mumbled something about getting my purse, and rushed back to my car to grab it. We exchanged a few more awkward words as we climbed into his car, and then we were on our way.
The movie was completely forgettable, a cheesy romantic comedy with bad actors and a worse script. We did watch it, in spite of Taylor’s jokes about the other things we could do alone in his car in the dark. I laughed off every one of his jokes and hoped he couldn’t see my deep red blush in the movie’s light.
We didn’t even hold hands like teenagers, nor did he try to sneak his arm around my shoulder. It felt anti-climactic. Wasn’t this supposed to be a date? It hardly felt like one. There was an awkwardness, a strange almost tangible feeling, but we were old friends, weren’t we? This wasn’t a first date between two people who had never met.
This was Taylor… and me. It was awkward but somehow familiar at the same time.
We didn’t eat dinner after the movie. It was late and my stomach was aching, because I hadn’t been able to eat earlier due to nerves. I understood, though, that Taylor couldn’t go in public restaurants. I was sure he must have had food in his pool house, but I didn’t have the nerve to ask. I didn’t have the nerve to do much of anything as he ushered me into the house and gave me the grand tour.
“It’s not much, I know,” he said as we stood in the middle of the combination living room and dining room. “But I like being a little bit on my own. It’s kind of more and less freedom than I had in New York, but what are you gonna do? I’m really supposed to stay… isolated. So this way I’m not breathing in germs from the kids, but I’m still near enough for Mom to dote on me.”
I nodded through his entire speech, the enormity of what he’s been through hitting all at once and maybe for the first time. When he saw that I was not going to reply with words, he took a few steps backward into the kitchen.
“Do you want anything to eat? Drink? I may still have a few of my very first legally purchased beers.”
I chuckled and shook my head. “No, thanks. I’m fine.”
I was anything but fine, but Taylor didn’t need to know that. As soon as I met his eyes — mistake — I could see that he saw right through my attempts to play it cool.
“Come here,” he said, motioning me into the kitchen. “I know it’s a mess and all, but I want you to be comfortable here. Make yourself at home.”
I took off my shoes and took a step closer to Taylor. He gave me a reassuring smile and a nod. My fears didn’t vanish completely, but I felt better. Bolder. I took a few more steps across the room until finally I was standing right in front of him.
“You know,” he said softly, closing the small gap between our bodies. “There’s one thing I never got to do back when you were in high school…”
I knew then what was going to happen. There was no question about it. Taylor rested his arms on my shoulders and I let my eyes flutter shut as I watched him lean down. The second my eyes were fully closed, his lips connected with mine.
I’d developed a theory about kissing, a theory that Melanie laughed off when I shared it with her. When I kissed Jacob, there were always butterflies in my stomach. I’d never felt that so strongly before him and not at all after him. I kept throwing myself at more and more guys, hoping to finally feel it again. Didn’t that feeling mean something, I’d asked Melanie. What if it never happened again and I’d lost my change at love?
But Taylor… when Taylor kissed me, I felt it. He was nothing more than a skeleton beneath my hands that grasped at his shirt, but it didn’t matter. That kiss, his kiss, meant everything.
I felt that kiss down to my toes and I never wanted it to end. Taylor pulled away first and I tugged pitifully on his shirt, pulling myself up onto my toes to stay near his lips. He looked at me and chuckled, and for the first time, I noticed that he had no eyebrows or even eyelashes.
It was a strange thing to notice, but like every other aspect of his changed appearance, I was finding myself far more capable of taking it in stride than I would have imagined.
“Why don’t we finish this tour in the bedroom?” He asked, his lash-less eyes still smiling down at me.
“Yeah, okay,” I managed to choke out.
Taylor led the way and I followed closely behind him. It only gave me time to notice how low on his hips his jeans sat. They had to be at least a size too big and even his belt didn’t seem up to the task of keeping them on. His t-shirt—he certainly hadn’t dressed up for the date—also hung limply on him like he was nothing more than a clothes hanger.
His bedroom was plain and simple and said nearly nothing at all about the guy who lived there. I supposed that shouldn’t have surprised me; he had only moved in after getting out of the hospital. There was a desk with a few pill bottles on top, and a hospital mask dangled from one of the bedposts. After those two discoveries, I decided to stop looking around the room and just focus on Taylor.
I let him pick out the movie, and he chose, of all things, The Goonies. It wasn’t romantic at all, and we’d both seen it a million times. Needless to say, we didn’t see very much of it that night. I wasn’t surprised at all when I saw him casually moving closer to me, and I fully anticipated his next kiss. It felt… right. Even when his hands began to wander under my shirt, that was all I could think. It just felt so right to be with Taylor. It hardly seemed like this was the first time he’d touched me that way, but I knew it was. For as comfortable as it felt, though, it could have been the thousandth time.
I hadn’t lost my virginity to a guy I loved. I wasn’t even sure before that night that I’d ever had sex with a guy I loved. Marcus… maybe. I thought I’d loved him. But being with Taylor, listening to the soft little moans he made and watching him move on top of me, felt so, so different from any sex I’d ever had. I didn’t want to call it making love, because that seemed so cheesy, but I knew no other way to accurately describe it.
When Taylor pulled back and turned his head away from me, I didn’t know what to think.
“Fuck…” he mumbled, running his hand over his face. It was then that I noticed how hard he was breathing, which wasn’t unusual, I supposed.
Still… I was concerned. “Are you okay?”
“Not really,” he said, his voice sounding a little forced as he gasped for breath. “I can’t really… I don’t have a lot of energy. I’ll be alright in a minute, I swear. Then we can carry on.”
“Are you even supposed to be…?” I asked, my brow furrowing as I realized just how bad the situation was.
“Honestly?” He replied, a tiny smirk on his lips. “Probably not. But I’m not going to let that stop me.”
And he didn’t. His full energy never seemed to return, but that was fine. I just wanted him to be okay. The sex was still easily the best I’d ever had, and I knew that had little to do with Taylor’s skills or anything other than just Taylor himself.
When it was over, I slipped off to the bathroom to change into my pajamas. I’d tucked a t-shirt and shorts into my purse just in case, since it was strongly implied that I would be spending the night. It was late by then, I knew, so I assumed he wouldn’t ask me to leave. In the bathroom there were even more pill bottles and I tried not to look at them all.
Taylor had already settled into the bed, his arms crossed behind his head on the pillow, when I returned. He’d slipped back into his boxers, but that was all. There was a satisfied little smile on his face that only grew as he watched me walk into the room and climb into bed next to him.
“That… was the best sex I’ve ever had,” he said.
I raised an eyebrow. “Really? But you’re…”
“What, a rockstar?” He asked, then turned his head to stare directly at me with those freakishly piercing eyes. “Lady, you’re only the third girl I’ve slept with. Sure, I fooled around before… well, before I met you. But I was with Hannah for a long time. I had a few casual dates when we broke up the first time, but that was it. Certain… other things got in the way, you know?”
I nodded. I hadn’t really considered that. It just seemed insane to realize that little old me was more experienced than Taylor Hanson. Not sure that I wanted to really continue that conversation, I let my eyes wander over Taylor’s body. I’d noticed the scar on his chest, and my hand darted out to touch it almost completely of its own accord.
“Is this… umm…”
Taylor nodded. “The first one, yeah. Second one was on the back of my head.”
He leaned his head toward me and I craned my neck to see it. Sure enough, there was a matching scar just above the base of his skull, a long line of raised, pink skin marring his otherwise bald head. He’d only taken his hat off once I started tugging on his shirt, and I wondered how much he’d wanted to just leave it on during the entire thing.
“I’m kind of lucky the tumors were where they were,” he said as I continued to run my finger along the scar. “The first one was pressing on my lung, you know? So I was always out of breath. I didn’t think that much of it, until I started really slowing down and spacing out.”
I nodded. “Zac… umm, I saw him at that benefit thing. He told a little bit about it all.”
“He said he saw you,” Taylor replied with a nod of his own. “I just figured the pains were stress, you know? Recording, traveling, fighting with the label… it was all a lot to handle. But it got really bad one night and Mom convinced me to go to the hospital. The whole damn family went, and they were all there when the doctors gave me the news. Cancer.”
I had a feeling he was going to be talking for a while, so I just settled down into the bed and watched his lips as the words poured from them.
“They had a whole team of specialists there at the ready. I guess having money and fame helps with that sort of thing. They said I could take some time to consider the options, but I didn’t want to wait. Whatever needed to be done, I wasn’t doing myself any favors if I put it off. I told them to start chemo right then and there. It was late at night, but they did. It takes hours, and I slept through most of it… and slept straight on through to the morning. I think I was just so glad to know what was wrong, strange as that sounds, and it took a weight off my shoulders. Best night of sleep I’d had in a long time.
“All the kids went home, but Dad and Zac stayed behind to be with me when I woke up. Dad was out getting coffee when I finally came around, and there was Zac, just casually flipping through a magazine in the chair next to the bed. When he noticed I was awake, he looked up at me, said ‘morning, chemo-sabe,’ and then went right back to reading his magazine. And you know, that’s when I knew everything was going to be okay, cheesy as that sounds.”
I let out a small laugh at that, even thought it felt strange to laugh at a story about cancer. I’d only seen small glimpses of Zac’s sense of humor through the years, but I knew it was just as odd as Taylor’s.
“But then…” Taylor said, tapping the back of his head. “It came back. It was headaches this time, and I knew. I knew it was back, but I tried to ignore it. Stupid.”
“You’re not stubborn or anything,” I replied.
“Not at all,” Taylor said, grinning. “Recurrences of my kind of cancer are pretty uncommon, you know. So they have to really go all out to treat it. It’s actually kind of cool, the way they did it. I mean, I don’t know much about science, but I thought it was cool.”
“What did they do?”
“First, surgery and chemo, but a much stronger dose. It basically completely destroyed my immune system. Have you seen tv shows where they have patients in sterile rooms?”
I nodded.
“That’s what I stayed in for the last few months,” he replied. “Everyone had to be disinfected before they could come in. I mean, I had no immune system. Before the chemo, they did a little surgical procedure to remove and store some of my stem cells, and then they put them back into me once I was effectively a blank slate. In theory, I was never sick. It’s all out of my system. Everything I was ever immunized against? Gone. I get to take all those shots again over the next few months. That’s why I still can’t go in public much now. It won’t take that long for my body to build back up now that I’m done with it all, but there are still all those restrictions I told you about. We’ve put off the tour as long as we could so I could be ready. I just hope… I just hope I really am.”
Some of what he’d said went over my head. I didn’t know anything about science or medicine. It sounded… impossible. But here he was. An impossible treatment for an impossible boy. Yeah, that sounded about right.
“What are you thinking about?” He asked. “I can see your brain working behind those eyes.”
“Just… about everything, I guess,” I replied. “Everything you just told me. All the time that’s passed. I mean, it’s been three years since I’ve even seen you in person. But it’s like… it’s like everything and nothing has changed between us.”
Taylor nodded. “I think what’s between us… that’s never gonna change, darling. Never has, never will.”
“I guess I just wish…” I began, glancing away from him. Making eye contact with him when I wasn’t talking about something so important was hard enough. I definitely couldn’t do it then. “I just wish we hadn’t wasted so much time.”
“What would have happened, though? If we’d gotten together back then.”
I shrugged, still not meeting Taylor’s eyes.
“I get it,” he said. “I was… the unknown. Whatshisname was the safe bet. I wasn’t. And let’s face it, I’ve only gotten worse since then. But what if you had taken the risk? Once you were in college, we’d have drifted apart. Isn’t that what college does? If not… you wouldn’t have stuck by me through the chemo.”
“I’d like to think I would have,” I whispered.
“You wouldn’t have,” he replied.
His words were like a knife to my heart. I couldn’t imagine his little Hannah was so much stronger than me, but I didn’t dare say it. Did Taylor even know me at all? But then… maybe he was right. I was stronger now, but that first year of college had been tough. Trying to go through the divorce, the depression… all of that and a boyfriend with cancer? It seemed almost impossible. Maybe he had a point.
“Anyway,” he said, running my hand through my hair. “You’re here now, right?”
“I am,” I replied. “I still wonder, though. It’s not like we ever really even… dated. It’s weird to feel so close to you after so long. Don’t you think?”
“Maybe. But we didn’t need to date. I mean, it would have been nice. But it doesn’t mean there was nothing there.”
I nodded.
“Want to know something?” He asked.
“Sure…” I replied, having no clue where that question had come from.
“Every time I write a song about the sky… or a lyric about it, at least, it’s about you. That whole ‘blue skye’ thing.”
That left me entirely speechless. I wanted to say something. When I got home, I had every intention of looking up his entire discography. I wanted to hear these songs. I knew some of them were about me, but I wondered just how many were…
I noticed Taylor staring at me and I really wished I had something intelligent to say. But I didn’t. I just looked right at him and yawned.
Taylor chuckled softly. “Are you tired?”
I nodded. “Aren’t you? It’s late…”
“I am, but… I don’t sleep much. I took my sleeping pills while you were in the bathroom. They’ll kick in soon, and hopefully I’ll be out. I roll around and kick a lot, though. Another lovely side effect of… I don’t even know anymore. One of the four billion drugs in my system.”
“I saw all the bottles,” I admitted.
“Would you believe there used to be more?” He asked. “Now it’s mostly steroids and sleeping pills. Stuff to build me back up and knock me out. There are pain pills, too, but I don’t take those as much now. If I could get enough sleep, I wouldn’t hurt as much.”
“Are you in pain now?” I asked.
He forced a smile. “Not right now, darling. And in general, not nearly as much as the first time. I’m not saying I was addicted to the pain pills or anything, but let’s just say, I took them. A lot. And when I ran out, it was not pleasant.”
I nodded softly, unsure what to say to that little confession.
“Don’t worry about me now,” he said, kissing my cheek. “I’ll be fine. I’ll go to sleep, eventually, and then tomorrow I’ll prop myself up with a Red Bull, then do it all over again. But get some sleep now, okay? I know you’re tired, and hopefully you’ll have less trouble falling asleep than me.”
“Okay,” I replied. “Goodnight, Taylor.”
“Goodnight, Lady.”
As I rolled over and curled myself into the warm cocoon of his body and the soft quilt he wrapped around us, I realized something.
I was in love with him.
I woke up before Taylor the next morning. The sleeping pills evidently put him into something of a coma once they actually took effect, and I supposed that was a good thing, if he was truly in that much pain. For several minutes, I just lay in bed and watched him sleep. His eyelids fluttered as though he were having a bad dream and every so often, his entire body would twitch. It had woken me up several times during the night, but as soon as I remembered who I was with, I drifted off again easily.
It was almost noon, though, judging by the alarm clock on Taylor’s bedside table, and I couldn’t go back to sleep again. After watching him sleep for a few minutes more, I peeled myself away from him and gathered up my abandoned clothes. I turned back to him as I slipped back into the blouse and skirt I’d worn the day before, even though I knew he was still asleep and wasn’t watching me change.
Once I’d smoothed my clothes down and done my best to pull the knots of out of my hair, I crept out to the living room and turned the television on at a low volume. I figured Taylor would be asleep for a while, but I didn’t want to just leave without saying goodbye. I hadn’t promised my dad that I would be home at any particular time, so I figured it really didn’t matter how long I hung around Taylor’s house.
I’m not sure how long I sat there barely paying any attention at all to the television before Taylor walked into the room. He’d managed to pull on a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt, but he still looked half asleep.
“Good morning, beautiful,” he said, leaning against the doorframe.
“Sleeping Beauty finally decided to join us, hmm?”
Taylor frowned ever so slightly. “It’s the pills… once I’m out, I’m out. And I’m going to need a Red Bull, stat, if I’m going to be any use to you today.”
I bit my lip, wishing I hadn’t said anything at all, and watched as Taylor made his way to the kitchen and grabbed a Red Bull from the refrigerator. He opened it and gulped down half the can before turning around to face me again.
“So,” he said. “Lunch? Before you go home… I ought to at least buy you one meal, even if I didn’t take you out for a nice dinner.”
“Where can we go?” I asked, still nervously chewing on my lip.
“I can’t go in anywhere, so… there’s a Sonic just up the road. How about that?”
I wanted to say no. It reminded me too much of the night of the benefit, when Zac and I had talked. But if it was the only place we could go, then that was all there was to it. I nodded and forced a smile, and soon we were buckled into Taylor’s car, speeding down the tiny little country road that took us closer to downtown.
We ate lunch in his car, of course, with nothing but the radio to fill our awkward silence. I wished I could just stay with him all day. Why did I even need to go home at all? I shouldn’t have even bothered telling Dad that I was coming, and instead just spent the entire weekend with Taylor.
Assuming Taylor would have wanted me to stay.
I knew how I felt, but his feelings were a mystery. At times, he was just as intense as I remembered him being, and at other times he seemed so casual and dismissive. I didn’t know what to make of him at all.
I finished my onion rings on the drive back to his house, and we sat in his car for a few minutes longer, both dancing around the word goodbye.
“Text me or something when you get home?” He finally said. “Just so I know you made it okay.”
I nodded, even though that seemed silly. It was only on the other side of town. Mounds wasn’t that far from the suburb where I lived. But Taylor seemed so serious when he said it that I couldn’t tell him no.
“And Lady… I’m glad we finally did this. So what if it took us a few years? It happened when it needed to happen, I think.”
Again, I could only nod. Taylor leaned across the car and kissed me again, and I didn’t want to ever let him go or let that moment end.
To: Taylorhanson@hanson.net
From: adelaide.quinn@cameron.edu
Subject: Checking in
Just checking in, letting you know that I made it home perfectly safe. Although I then arrived home to find all of the locks on the house changed. Dad has a habit of losing his keys and then changing the locks, so I was just a bit upset that I didn’t know about this in advance. But evidently, his girlfriend went nuts and he broke up with her. Then she came to the house and stole a bunch of my clothes. Thus the lock being changed. He’s gone to retrieve the clothes now, but if that doesn’t work… I don’t know.
And in case I didn’t mention it already, last night was amazing and wonderful, for various reasons.
To: adelaide.quinn@cameron.edu
From: Taylorhanson@hanson.net
Subject: Re: Checking in
I’m glad you’re safe, and sorry to hear about locks being changed and stuff being stolen.
Thank -you- for last night and today. Overnight, you turned from a simple fantasy, to an experience I’m going to revisit plenty of times over.
And that’s excluding just how much we laughed and enjoyed each other’s company. Factoring that in, I’m wishing we were closer together all the time. Can I just stop this traveling musician thing?
A wishing tree
I asked for you
Ticking on from midnight
You won’t remember
But I doTake me home
It’s all in me
Trading shadows for sunlight
You can’t control what you can’t seeSo just let go
And now you’re mine
We’ll make nothing everything
Hold this moment
Take your timeIt’s just you and me and you
Just you and the sun and the sky
It’s just you and me and you
Just you and the sun and the sky